During Wednesday’s Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) questioned Dr. Barry Paul Sleckman, the Director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center, about federal funding cuts affecting biomedical research.
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00:00expired. I went way over. I'm sorry, Madam Chair. I appreciate your indulgence. I'm going to call
00:06on Senator Reid, but I also want to announce that a vote has started on the Senate floor.
00:14Senator Capito, who chairs the subcommittee with jurisdiction over this issue,
00:22will take over as the chair. We'll like a vote, but we will be trying to keep the hearing going
00:28in the meantime. Thank you, Senator.
00:34Well, thank you, Chair Collins, and thank you, Ranking Member Murray, for convening this very
00:43important hearing, and also thank you for the witness for your extraordinarily effective and
00:49timely testimony. Let's agree from the beginning, everybody loves biomedical research.
00:58But there's some people that don't want to fund it adequately, and they're in the administration,
01:04and that's why we're here today, frankly. I want to particularly thank Emily for coming and
01:09testifying. It must be difficult to talk about that. Let me also point on the obvious. Charlie's
01:16the best-behaved person in this room, including all of us. So, Charlie, thank you.
01:24Dr. Sleckman, the term administration is slashing funds for research, and now they've raised up this
01:34issue of indirect costs. Oh, they're not central that we can be dismissed with. But the terminology
01:40really doesn't capture what these costs are for. They help keep patients safe while they're in treatment.
01:48They help to provide the sanitary situation in a hospital research. They also are used, in many cases,
02:00to subsidize young professionals who eventually will become the real researchers several years from now.
02:09So, can you talk about how this will impact the University of Alabama, your facilities, if it's cut to 15 percent?
02:18Yes, Senator, thank you. I can certainly comment on that.
02:22As was discussed earlier, these costs, which we call indirect costs, are used to support all of the
02:32infrastructure required to do the research. So, to kind of put it simply, if I was making automobiles
02:39and I considered how much it costs for parts and labor on the assembly line, those would be direct costs
02:45to make the automobile. The cost for the accountants, the salespeople, the depreciation of equipment,
02:51buildings, the security guard, those would be the indirect costs for making the automobile.
02:57So, biomedical research, like any industry, has direct costs that go directly into the work product,
03:04which is the science, and indirect costs into things that support that science.
03:10A concrete example of a reduction of indirect costs for us was brought up earlier.
03:15If indirect costs drops, we will no longer be able to support the level of staff needed to safely open
03:24and run clinical trials. So, when we get money for a clinical trial, that money goes directly to paying
03:32the costs of administering the new drug and taking care of the patient. It does not cover any of the costs
03:39of the oversight groups, like the Institutional Review Board, the legal group, that are required to open those trials,
03:47monitor them, and make sure that they're being run safely.
03:52Thank you very much. And Dr. Parikh, it was mentioned when we made the Gates Foundation grants,
03:57other foundation grants. Don't they essentially sort of play, utilize this indirect costs that we put up,
04:04so that their contribution can be much less in terms of indirect costs?
04:09They certainly pool together, but in addition, they allow certain costs that we would call indirect costs
04:15for the federal government, they allow those to be considered in the direct costs,
04:18which means it's an apples to oranges comparison.
04:21I think that's important to note.
04:23Finally, Emily, thank you for being here again.
04:29I've had the great fortune of working with my colleague, Senator Capito, on the Star Act,
04:33which is the first legislation that focused NIH on pediatric cancer research, and we're very proud.
04:42We've worked together a very capable leading, and we've got it through.
04:48So we've got NIH focused now much intensely on pediatric cancer research.
04:53And one of the reasons we do that is because we know it affects the whole family.
04:57It's not somebody, an adult, can go to work and put up with it.
05:01It's the whole family.
05:03And indeed, one of the aspects of our research in the Star Act is the fact that we have required them
05:09to do long-term studies of the effects of cancer on children, not just the child,
05:14but the family, brothers, and sisters, because that has to be dealt with, too.
05:18And, again, your remarkable testimony is deeply appreciated.
05:25Charlie's great.
05:26Anything else you'd like to add?
05:28I'd just like to thank you for putting forth that act.
05:32And Charlie's actually followed by two clinical trials to measure her survivorship
05:36and to help other kids who are yet to come.
05:41That's great.
05:41Thank you, Madam Chair.
05:43And go Charlie.